


All My Stumbling Phrases

by Chaerring



Series: Your Songs Remind Me Of Swimming [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Canon, But blood will tell, But not darker than the show?, Canon Typical Violence, Gen, Half Siren really, Kind of dark, Stiles centric, Stiles is a Siren, Stiles's mom was a Siren, Whoops another WIP, spoilers through S2 Ep 10
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-03
Updated: 2012-12-13
Packaged: 2017-11-11 08:43:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/476713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chaerring/pseuds/Chaerring
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles has to babble and expound every thought in his head, forcing them out into the world no matter how he would prefer to keep them to himself. If he keeps quiet, holds his tongue too long, a song wells up in his chest like a swelling wave, a tsunami of sound and it bursts from his lips just as damaging as if it had been a wall of water.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Don't own Teen Wolf, or the title lyrics from Florence and the Machine's "All This and Heaven Too".
> 
> THANKS A BILLION TO TheGreatSporkWielder, for betaing wonderfully as always, and damn her and Lia for making this a work in progress.
> 
> Also I give credit to Pembroke and her 30 Days of Monster Stiles for inspiring The-Faro-Fixer on tumblr to write a first siren!Stiles fic. They were the inspiration for this.

Stiles talks a lot. It's a fact generally accepted by Beacon Hills. What they don't know is that he _has_ to talk a lot, for their sakes and his sanity. He has to keep himself spinning and breathless as much as he can so he doesn't cause problems, doesn't attract attention to himself, and most importantly, so he doesn't do anything he'll regret later. 

He has to babble and expound every thought in his head, forcing them out into the world no matter how he would prefer to keep them to himself. If he keeps quiet, holds his tongue too long, a song wells up in his chest like a swelling wave, a tsunami of sound and it bursts from his lips just as damaging as if it had been a wall of water. It's beautiful, completely unlike what he sounds like when he's gasping for air and trying to squeeze just one more smartass suggestion out of his mouth and into Scott's ears. It's an age old song whose melody makes up his veins and whose notes rest in his heart. 

He almost never sings it, though, because his mother asked him to be careful with it. 

Parthenope Stilinski had warned her son, Thelxiope, about the power of their song. She had been able to control it much better than he could. Stiles could remember Saturday afternoons when their family would drive to the middle of the forest, just the three of them and she would sing. Sometimes when he turned his head and looked sideways through the light it even looked like his mother had wings and he knew that she was an angel sent from heaven just for him and his dad to share. 

One Saturday, Stiles felt the song in his chest swell for the first time and he began to sing as well, grabbing his mother's hand where they stood in the middle of the clearing. She stopped, turning to him in surprise, and Stiles nearly stopped as well, but he found he couldn't halt the flow of notes from his mouth. They were compulsory. Then his father, just a deputy then, in uniform because he had a shift after their outing, was drawing his gun and holding it to his temple. Parthenope screamed and shoved her fingers into her son’s mouth causing him to jerk and bite down on her, but it stopped the song. 

Thelxiope never forgot the taste of his mother's blood on his too sharp teeth ( _it scared him how good it tasted_ ), the ghostly feel of her feathers he couldn't always see on his cheek ( _He was afraid they weren't hers, but maybe his_ ), or the way his father carried ear plugs in his pocket from that point on ( _so his son couldn't kill him accidentally_ ). 

Thelxiope and his father find Parthenope with her head laying three feet from her shoulders in their clearing one Saturday a month before Stiles's freshman year of high school starts. He sang a mourning song at her funeral. The town and the Sheriff came away thinking she had died of cancer, a long drawn out battle that had left son and father worn and tired. The truth is she was murdered and the song in his heart will never be quite the same because of it. Thelxiope tells his dad he needs to call him Stiles, too, and he doesn't sing again. He researches, though, trying to understand why his mother had been beheaded. It's only then that he realizes they aren't angels, but sirens.

It's then that he finally crosses _Sing to her_ off his list of ways to make Lydia love him.

Stiles gets scared after Scott is bitten. He becomes terrified that Scott will clue in, that the werewolf super hearing will catch an edge in his voice that humans don't have. He twitches all the time, hoping that his friend won't see wings that he's not even sure are there most of the time. He finds out quickly that he never should have worried about Scott. His best friend only had eyes for Allison, and Derek Hale, the other sudden threat to his secret, was far too busy slamming him around to pay attention to anything odd about him. Stiles let it happen, traded bruises instead of having to explain himself when he voice whammied the Sourwolf. Not to mention he didn't even know what would happen if he tried it when he was rusty, or what sort of effect it would have on a werewolf. He didn't want Derek to kill himself, not even a little, no matter what he'd said otherwise. 

Peter's the only one who seems to notice anything and that scares Stiles the most, but even he didn't seem to notice that Stiles's voice wasn't human.

_What a lovely voice you have, Stiles. I want to hear you howl._

He turns down the bite for many reasons, but none of them are because he doesn't want it. He wants it so badly. He wonders if it would change his voice; take away the aching song in his heart. He wonders if it would kill him or make his imaginary wings finally visible to the world. He wants to run on the ground like Scott and Derek. He wants to stay special, to stay inhuman, but not be so dangerous to his dad. He figured it was better that he said no, though. He had practice controlling and hiding his song. He wasn't sure he could deal with an animal in his veins instead. 

For an excruciating few encounters after Derek becomes the Alpha, Stiles worries again. He worries that Derek will have more of a clue than Peter did, that something about being the Alpha will cause him to _see_ Stiles for what he really is. When it doesn't come to pass, Stiles learns not to worry anymore. That's ruined, of course, when he tries to sing at the kanima in the garage. His throat is stiff and hard to move even internally, but that doesn't make a difference for his song. What makes the difference is the fact that reptiles, snakes especially, hear much less, and in a very different way than humans. 

It would figure that the one time Stiles actually tried to use his super power _it didn't work._

The pool is simultaneously his element, and really, really _not_ his element. He loves the water, loves the beach when he can wade into the salt water that feels like home and stretch himself out on a rock in the water. He always wants to sing the most then, to trumpet his song to the entire ocean. The pool is water, but he's submerged to his chin and the chemicals of the supposedly clean water twist and choke at the song in him after the first hour. He begins to see why his mother always sunbathed instead of playing in the community pool with him and Scott when they were small. He never noticed then, possibly because they spent more time running around the pool than in it, but sometimes the wings he keeps telling himself he _doesn't have_ weigh more than Derek does with the chemical filled water soaking them. 

He didn't feel right again until he had made sure his house was deserted and he sang quietly to himself, clearing his chest of the warped out of shape feeling. His not-wings felt heavy for days.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to TheGreatSporkWielder for betaing!
> 
> I have no clue how this has happened. /headdesks

When the wolves dare to go after Lydia, Stiles thinks for the first time of using his voice as a weapon in something other than self defense. If he gave the wolves something else to worry about, mysterious suicides by the lake, perhaps, then maybe they'd forget about Lydia for a while. He’s seriously contemplating it, planning it out, trying to pick out who he could lure there, and how many at once, when he cuts his finger on a map of the town. Automatically, he sucks the appendage into his mouth.

His blood tastes like his mother's and brings back that awful Saturday afternoon. It brings him to his senses and makes him realize there would be no way to effectively get the wolves' attention without getting his father's. The Sheriff would know exactly who had done it, or if not, he'd be looking to Stiles for help in luring the other siren out. He can only imagine how a conversation like that would destroy them.

_Was it you?_

_Dad, how could you even--_

_Was it **you**?_

_I-_

_Jesus Christ, Stil--no, Thelxiope. What were you thinking? You **murdered** those people. _

_There's no proof._

_I can't let you just---_

_What are you going to do? Cut my head off?_

Stiles saves himself the heartache and lets Allison handle the bad-assery that night.

Of course, Allison isn’t available for their trip to the gay club where the music makes his song itch in his chest because the rhythms don’t match at all. It’s like a living thing inside of him, wanting to prove itself better and more sophisticated and it drives Stiles nuts because that’s never happened to him before. He listens to music all the time without feeling like he’s surrounded in shitty noise, but for some reason the bass making his chest vibrate was reaching a little further down inside him that night. The other option, that maybe he hadn’t been burying his song as deep as he should have been wasn’t something he could contemplate. 

The conversation outside with his dad looked bad to the drag queens who had somehow managed to eavesdrop and took pity on him later by giving him a few rousing “it gets better” speeches. He appreciated their kindness and couldn’t explain that his dad’s _You’re not gay_ was really more like code for _That wasn’t you, right? You’re not getting the urge to drown men in alcohol when sailors and the ocean are unavailable, are you?_.

The resulting restraining order is an embarrassment, but not really a problem. If Stiles absolutely has to he’ll go to Jackson’s door one night and sing to him while he’s human. It would save them the problem of finding his master. After their pep talk and planning session with Dr. Deaton, he wondered if singing at a human formed Jackson would make the mysterious douche bag controlling him go down, too. Probably not, considering his voice seemed to only work for mass trickery and suicides, but hey, maybe he could learn a new tune that would work. 

He’s wary of Deaton because the man knows way more than them and even more than what he’s actually letting on. It sets Stiles on edge, even if the song in his chest is a quiet as it ever is when he steps into the vet’s building. He tries to pass off responsibility of the mountain ash, because he’s had enough to do with fire for a lifetime when he’d much rather be on a beach, but that proves impossible to do. 

Stiles stops by the Doc’s office to get the garbage bag of mountain ash before he goes to pick up Scott for the rave. He studiously ignored the doctor’s farewell even though it echoed in his mind.

_The right note will help you tonight, Thelxiope._

A lot of the time Stiles forgets Parthenope was the one to mention how good Scott was with animals to Deaton only two weeks before she was killed. He tries not to think about what she would say to him now, mixed up with werewolves and contemplating murder.

Unsurprisingly, Deaton turns out to be right and it’s just a little, wavering, quiet, note as harmless as he can make it that Stiles needs to stretch the mountain ash further to cross the distance. It’s the first time he’s been able to use his song for something constructive instead of deadly and he wants to tell someone. He very nearly spills it all to Derek, but then Scott and Boyd are dying and they split ways. 

Stiles herds the wolf pups into his jeep, taking them back to their lair where he distracts them with an endless stream of chatter as he digs bullets out of Boyd and helps him get the wolfsbane out of his veins. The task and their tentative questions as he covers a wide range of topics serve to keep his mind away from his voice and his disgruntlement about being unable to make it recognized that he’d done something well for a change. It’s only as he’s cleaning up the mess and the smaller werewolves crowd around Boyd, cuddling him in a picture that shouldn’t be as cute as it is, that Stiles realizes he may have a personal wolfsbane himself. 

What could hurt a siren? It was something he needed to find out. If he absolutely had to, he’d go ask Deaton, but first he’d try his trusty friend, research. 

Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to find all that much out (read: nothing at all) before he realized he needed to be ready for Lydia’s party, which turned out to be even more of a disaster than he had thought it would be, just in a much different way. He knew a hallucination when he saw one, but that didn’t mean it hurt any less to see his father throw a liquor bottle at him. Stiles had been loved by both of his parents, there was no doubt in his mind about that, but at the same time, with his dad’s reaction to his mother’s death, he wondered sometimes how much of their devotion to each other was love and how much was an accidental spell Parthenope had cast with her voice.

It didn’t dawn on Stiles what they had actually found out about Matt and Jackson until long after their two classmates had stalked off. He had been too distracted by the beautiful sound that Matt’s body had made when it hit the water, the way his stomach cramped, and his song swelled in response to the sounds of a drowning victim. A hunger sped its way through his veins. He wanted to sing louder than he ever had before, to lure the rest of the party goers into the water, and sing to them to make their descent into the deep abyss pleasurable and soothing. 

Only when they realized Lydia was gone was he able to really pull himself from the sensation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because Sporky brought up a great point I want to say that the reason why Stiles didn't want to eat Derek like he got all excited about Matt drowning, was for a few reasons. 
> 
> 1) He likes Derek more than he likes Matt (though granted not by much).
> 
> 2) Derek didn't act like a drowning victim. He was paralyzed.
> 
> 3) Stiles was actually in the chlorine and like mentioned it was messing with him.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to TheGreatSporkWielder for holding my hand through googledocs and betaing XD

The hardest part, though Scott doesn’t know it, isn’t convincing the Sheriff to believe them, but convincing him to let Stiles go with them to the station. Stiles knows his dad is watching him like a hawk, waiting for him to slip up. The man is experienced enough between his son and his wife to know the signs of when something is about to break out of them. It shows how tired and how concerned he is when the words actually slip out of his mouth. _Trust you?_ Even on a good day, his dad would be more stringent than usual in keeping him away from a case having so much to do with swimmers and water. 

The thing about it is he’s absolutely right. _Next to sailors, swimmers are the most fun drowning victims._ The song is on his tongue heavy and begging to sound, but he opens his mouth, shuts it, swallows, and manages a weak _Trust Scott?_ instead. 

Stiles is sure the only reason he was able to convince his dad at all was because he was still in the dark about Lydia’s party, the chlorine sickness the week before, and all the other shit his son had gotten himself involved in. If his dad had been aware of even one of those water related incidents, he would know exactly how close Stiles was to losing something, a toss up between whether his control or his sanity went first, and he wouldn’t let the teenager anywhere near the station. 

As it is, he can’t bring himself to sing when Matt pulls the gun on him. He can smell blood and practically taste struggle in the air almost like candy, but he doesn’t sing. He wants to. _God_ , how he wants to, but his dad and Scott are in the next room with the door open and he knows his dad will give Scott his ear plugs. For a sickening moment, he wishes that wasn’t the kind of man his father was, then Matt’s pushing him into the room and waving the gun at all of them. His dad has a question in his eyes and Stiles avoids looking at it. He can’t answer.

He hates the sound of the handcuffs as he snaps them around his dad’s wrist. It’s so discordant and there’s no chance, not even a little one, of Stiles being able to sing when his dad will have a hard time getting to the ear plugs, and he still doesn’t know what will happen to Scott when he hears, especially not on a full moon. 

It infuriates Stiles, which in turn gives his song strength, making it hard to contain, harder to control. The scent of blood hits him like a tidal wave and he can hardly think of the bodies before him as people he knew, deputies he had seen working with his dad, even talked to on occasion. For a brief moment he can feel his eyes roll back in his head his teeth sharpen in his mouth and he _craves_ just a little taste. He stares and he stares until Matt shoves them forward down the hall and takes the sight away.

Derek’s arrival is simultaneously uplifting and hope dashing in a way that Stiles can’t handle if he wants anyone at all to leave the station alive that night, so he gives up on his chatter and concentrates his mind on repressing everything in him trying to get out. 

Of course, that’s the point when Matt decided to address him personally.

_Except for you, Stiles. What do you turn into?_

For the first time, Stiles understands Derek a little better. They don’t turn into anything. They are what they are. He isn’t Stiles the teenager who turns into Thelxiope the siren. He’s Thelxiope “Stiles” Stilinski, a siren. Derek Hale isn’t a man who turns into a wolf. He was born a werewolf, and that was all he had ever known, just as all Stiles had ever known was song and never seen feathers. 

Matt doesn’t deserve that kind of secret.

_Abominable snowman, but it’s more of like a winter time thing. You know, seasonal._

There’s a moment there, where Stiles knows nothing but the song in his chest, where his awareness of everything else is cut off. It’s simultaneously relieving and terrifying getting lost in it. Then he hits something with only a little give, but more than the floor would have and a steady thump under his ear brings him back to himself. Unlike most discordant annoying beats, it fits into and under his song like a bass line written for it. Stiles wants to close his eyes, and rest forever, immobile with his song strangled in his chest, but it’s Derek he’s laying on. Derek, who begins speaking and of course Stiles has to throw in his two cents when he can’t even make his chest move up and down properly to take a breath. 

He’s rolled over so quickly he doesn’t know what’s going on and then his chest is being stepped on. The song in him is being squeezed like it’s in a vice, forcing its way into his throat, but he has no breath, he has no way to propel it from his body. It’s burbling in his throat like liquid and he’s drowning in his own song, blissfully not long for the world. He won’t have to deal with such shit anymore. His only regret is the way he’d leave his relationship with his dad. Then the foot is gone and he’s breathing. It’s his closest call ever in saving all the notes from hitting the air. He knows his dad is waiting for the sound of them, thinking he never should have brought Stiles with him. 

Stiles hates it. He hates that he’s going crazy from the inside out with his own power; he hates that Matt just made it ten times worse with one action. Quietly, as he lay there on the floor concentrating on the steady drumming of Derek’s heart, he vowed that if someone else didn’t do it first, he was going to pay Matt a visit and give him a whole concert.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to TheGreatSporkWielder for betaing!

Over the years Stiles has found some things about him are different from others besides the obvious. His hearing, for one. Sometimes, the highest and lowest of notes that his dad could hear escaped him, but when he managed to focus he could hear things much further away than his dad could. Not heartbeats, like the werewolves, he wasn’t a lie detector; but words, movement, he could hear those things. 

It makes the gunshot and the way Melissa McCall screams that much worse from his position on the ground. He can hear the way the handcuffs clack against the holding bench when his dad stands and pulls forward. Stiles can hear it all, and he can’t move to stop any of it. He can’t sing even a small tune because Derek’s super ears are so close to his mouth. 

He bit his lip and held his tongue, as difficult as it was. Mrs. McCall is like a second mother to him and he knows she has no clue that Scott’s going to be okay unless Matt’s bullets had wolfsbane in them. The only thing she knows is that her baby is bleeding out in front of her, and Stiles can’t even begin to imagine that pain and helplessness. Sure, he’d been unable to save people, watched the mechanic die, but he’d never had to watch someone he loved die in front of him.

His rasping conversation with Derek about Matt’s consequences is a welcome distraction and reminds him of something his mother used to say before she was murdered.

_Remember, Thelxi, my darling, the gods love to reinforce their rules when we disobey, so we stick to them as closely as we can._

It makes Stiles half rethink his decision to kill Matt. The other teen deserved his every comeuppance. He asks Derek what they can do, hoping that maybe possibly the older man’s got an answer, a way to change their situation that wasn’t available when they were up to their necks in water. This is the third time they’ve been trapped together in a dire situation and that makes a pattern. It’s not something Stiles is sure he wants to be comfortable with.

The smell of Derek’s blood is intoxicating. He tries to pass himself off as disgusted, hoping it covers the particularly loud grumble of his stomach and that the werewolf assumes that his heart is beating quickly from adrenaline and fear, not from a lie. It’s not long before he has a bigger problem, though. In the quiet of the station, he can hear Matt clearly from the other room. He can hear his story about going to Isaac’s house, about being thrown in the pool. 

Stiles swears it’s like the whole town is out to make him lose control that night. It’s not even the description of the drowning. He could picture that himself easily. His imagination was incredibly good at supplying him with all the watery playgrounds he could think of with perfect sunbathing rocks and chairs. The problem, the thing that was making him salivate and want like he never had when he was a kid was the feeling in Matt’s voice. The pain and the anguish was killing him. It spoke to his song, drew it out like a moth to the flame. He wanted to sing for Matt, to take away his despair and sink him into the abyss peacefully like he could have gone.

It takes an amount of effort Stiles didn’t know he had to reel himself in when Matt switches gears from drowning to Greek myths. He wants to laugh. There is no way in Olympus or Hades that Jackson could be considered his cousin. The kanima was more like a komodo dragon than a fury. A fury was like Stiles, a winged woman of old lore vengeance. Okay, so not exactly like Stiles because sirens were pretty much down for killing sailors indiscriminately, vengeance needed or not, but he was still a damn sight more related to a fury than _Jackson_ ever would be. 

He had always known he healed faster than his father did, but Stiles had never really judged his healing rate against anything else before. Finally comparing to Derek’s healing powers gave him an explanation as to why he hadn’t needed to explain away bruises from all of his werewolf escapades. He knew he was probably crushing Derek’s hopes and dreams when he told him he could also feel his toes, but Stiles did it anyways. He took maybe just a tad more pleasure in Derek’s disgruntlement than he should have before the lights started flickering on and off. 

Scott leaves Stiles with his neck painfully flung back and it takes all of his meager ability to move to fling himself to the floor and try to make his way to his father. Of course just when Stiles thinks maybe things are looking up and his dad frees himself from the wall, Matt’s there, and Stiles can’t do anything except watch the fucker hurt his only family. There’s nothing in his throat except a phrase of deadly notes that he doesn’t dare release for fear of what Mrs. McCall might do. The relief that fills him when Derek and Scott show up to keep the kanima away from their parents seems to be enough to calm him down marginally. 

Apparently he didn’t heal as fast a werewolf after all, but he was still gradually regaining feeling in his legs. Everyone seemed to have forgotten about him just laying in the hallway; Scott, Derek, and thankfully Matt as well. He supposed he was lucky the hunters never noticed him in the first place. With a tremendous effort he pulled himself up on the wall and tried to listen for which direction he should go in. His hearing sharpened and he couldn’t believe, didn’t want to believe what his ears were telling him about Scott and Gerard. 

_I’ve done everything that you asked me--_

_...Leave Matt and Jackson to me._

It was the first time Stiles had ever _wanted_ to use his voice on someone close to him. He wanted to stop Scott in his tracks, to drag him back with a note in the air and screech in his ear until he explained what the hell he was thinking working with Gerard, giving Derek up to Gerard. It was an idiotic mistake. One that would probably get them all killed. 

Scott was playing directly into the older hunter’s wishes. The man was too old to do what he did and survive so long without planning in the long term. Stiles was learning that from experience, but Gerard had probably more than fifty years of experience on them. Adrenaline moved through Stiles’s veins as he made a decision, wiping out the majority of the toxin left in him. He’d have to talk to Derek and go after Scott later. He would even have to wait to see about his father. Hopefully, Mrs. McCall would be able to get to him soon.

For now, the most important thing Stiles could do would be to stop Gerard from accomplishing whatever he wanted to do with Matt and Jackson.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize that nothing really happened in this chapter that y'all didn't already know about;; I'm going to wait until tomorrow night's episode comes out to continue. Likely I'm going to go "Fuck it" and go AU from this point on, but maybe I'll finish out the finale for S2 before I do that. 
> 
> If you haven't already you should totally check me out on tumblr at putonhisuniverse.tumblr.com , and you should click the little series arrow and read more about the Sheriff and Parthenope. :D
> 
> Either later tonight or sometime tomorrow there will be another one-shot ~~or two of them depending on how fast I am~~ posted in the series, not about Stiles, exactly, but a little more about Parthenope. They may also feature Gerard or Derek.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU SO MUCH TO EVERYONE WHO HAS COMMENTED AND GIVEN ME KUDOS.
> 
> Enormous thanks, as always, to my beta TheGreatSporkwielder. 
> 
> She has written some fantastic companion pieces for the series from Parthenope's point of view that give me so many feelings. Everyone should check them out.
> 
> I'm sorry this took so long. I hit a bit of a stumbling point with Matt's death, and I was in the process of moving. The next chapter is already begun, so you shouldn't have to wait as long for it. :D

By the time Stiles makes it out of the station, he’s moving almost entirely unhindered. He doesn’t know which way to go. There’s no one outside. No outside law enforcement on their way to help, and it looks like the hunters kept their entrance to the front of the building, but neither of those things are going to help him figure out which way Gerard went. 

He takes a deep breath and inside his throat his song feels like it’s right on the brink of spilling over. Suddenly, Stiles is a glass with a bubble of surface tension formed precariously at the top of him. He pushes the feeling aside and tries to listen. For once he wants to take advantage of his abilities rather than ignore them. 

He focuses on the sounds of movement rather than voices, the breath in someone’s lungs, heart beats or whatever other nonsense the werewolves used to track people. He wasn’t a lupine based creature. He was ever so slightly avian, so his strengths lay with his eyes and his ability to track movement with them. The hearing was a small side effect that rarely did anything but give him a headache, though it was useful when telling what his dad was up to in the house.

Slowly, but surely, Stiles became almost hyper aware of his surroundings. There was a small bat echo locating above him somewhere and a land mammal burrowing into the ground to his left, but what Stiles was interested in was the noise of something larger, maybe something large enough to be a teenager or old man, rolling down a hill. 

He concentrates on the noise and heads for it. The way _feels_ right and tugs at the veins inside of him. His song hums a little expectantly and Stiles realizes he’s heading for the small river by the station. It’s not hard to find who he’s looking for just to the right of the bridge. He can’t see Matt at all in the dark at first. Just the back of Gerard and the old man’s broader shoulders. 

Out of his conscious control Stiles’s eyesight sharpens and he realizes why he hadn’t seen Matt before. Gerard is _drowning him_. The reality of the situation and Stiles’s literal bird’s eye view of it makes his mouth water. The surface tension in his song breaks, but rather than spilling out of his mouth and lungs like he had been afraid it would for so long, it filled his veins. His song was no longer confined to his chest cavity, twisting and turning in on itself, never fulfilled. Now it wormed its way through every single bit of him. 

Stiles could feel his own body respond to it, changing in many ways. It was like all the things he had ever imagine he felt about himself were coming true. His hands and feet curved and sharpened like talons to rend the scales from fish _(or flesh from bone and sinew)_. His teeth sharpened _(All the better to break skin, my dear)_. Then, for the first time in his life, he is absolutely certain, no doubt whatsoever, that the wings he feels are his own. They’re heavy, but it’s a comforting weight, nothing like when they were heavy with the chemicals from the pool. They cast a shadow over him, and he thinks they might be easily three or maybe five times his body size. 

The major shocker though, isn’t his body, but his song.   
It’s still as strong as it ever was in his chest, but the overflow in his veins feels like something that’s been a long time coming. It’s like the same relief he felt when dark hair started to appear in his nether regions and his armpits. He suddenly felt older and more able to manage himself. His melody was less urgent; he felt like he was waiting. 

By that time, Matt had stopped fighting Gerard. Somehow Stiles’s eyes had sharpened onto the figure of the murderer in the water and focused there. The other teenager’s face was almost peaceful as he held onto his breath, struggling to hold onto the last moment. Stiles’s song thrummed a little in his throat like it was suggesting he give the boy a peaceful send off. He even opened his mouth to release the note and for once fulfill his song’s purpose. 

Then he thought of watching his dad crumple to the ground. He thought of all the deputies that had smiled and waved at him, helped him make his dad keep to the diet, laying dead on the ground with their chests torn open. He thought of an idiot swim team that did something stupid, but might not have deserved to die for it.

Stiles shut his mouth and watched Matt go violently into his death.

_A hard choice._

It’s not a thought. It was too fast for Stiles to even realize what he was doing, like a reflex. His wings lift him into the air, spinning him around with his feet a foot or two off the grass before he hits the ground again. 

“ _Mom?!_ ”

_Thelxiope. I’m proud of you._

The use of his birth name startles him almost as much as hearing it in his mother’s beautiful voice. Before, his name had always seemed like a pillowcase, and Stiles like a dirty potato trying wear it properly. Now, the song in his veins does a little trill and he finally feels like maybe he’s the pillow for the case, or the maybe the pillowcase was a potato sack the whole time. The point is that for the first time, he _likes_ the way his name hits his ears. 

“Wh-what?”

_You’re growing up._

Stiles stares incredulously at his mother’s face. She’s not quite see through, not quite like a ghost from the tv, but there’s an other worldliness to her limbs and the way he can clearly see how inhuman she is that gives her death away. 

“I don’t understand.”  
She’s his mother. He wants to fling himself at her and cling to her like he hasn’t been able to do for almost two years, but the past third of a year dealing with the supernatural has taught him caution when he warnings never had. 

_Your wings filled out, and your eyes are storming. You’ve transitioned. I wasn’t sure you ever would because of Caleb’s blood in you, but the more stress you put on yourself...._ She snarls a little in the back of her throat, but it’s still music to Stiles’s ears. _The more stress those werewolves and hunters put on you.....The longer it continued, the more I knew you would become fully like me. You adapted too well to them. They’re younger than us, werewolves. More Roman than Greek, but compared to other things they’re still very old._

For once Stiles doesn’t want the history lesson. At any other point in time he would be eating up the information, but in this moment he’s struck dumb and uncaring by his mother’s form. He throws himself forward into her. He’s surprised by how cold she is and by the fact that he doesn’t fall through her, but the feel of her in his arms is so much _less_ than it should be. 

“I missed you _so_ much, Mom.”

There’s a feather weight across his shoulders and he knows it’s her arm, returning the embrace.

_I never went anywhere, Thelxi. I was always here watching over you with your father._

She draws back slightly and holds his chin between her index finger and thumb for a moment. He’s content just to look into her face for as long as she wants to hold him there. It’s a shock to realize he’s a little taller than her now, and the shadow his wings casts is much larger than her own. It doesn’t last as long as he would like it to before she’s turning slightly away, looking back towards the station. 

_Your father’s waking up. I need to go back to him._

A sinking feeling hits Stiles’s stomach and he stares in the direction she’s looking.

“Wait-- Don’t say-- Has he been able to see you?”

_Yes, of course. He’s my husband._

“And he didn’t think to _tell_ me?”

Stiles couldn’t believe it. His Dad had been talking to his mom for nearly two years while she was missing from him like a hole punched straight through his chest. A piece of his strange blood gone entirely. 

“I could have been learning from you about this-- About my song---Not panicking and stumbling thinking I was going to kill someone if I stopped to take too many breaths--”

The broken look on her face makes him want to take back his words, to retract everything he said about the subject, but the pain and the fury he felt, the overwhelming sense of how out of control his life was kept him from doing so.

_It...it was my decision in the end. He thought you might be afraid he was losing his mind, and I thought...I never thought you would transition. I didn’t think you would grow into a place on the second plane. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to talk to you directly again, and it’s not fair to make your father be the go between._

The reasoning behind his parents’ decision takes the sting of his anger because that had been a horrible time in the Stilinski household and he can see how they would come to that conclusion. It doesn’t take away the soreness, the simple hurt aching in his chest, though. 

“I--”

Her wings lift her into the air a few feet and she shakes her head.

_I’ve got to go, baby. Go home, rest. You’ve had a difficult night and your body is still adjusting. We’ll talk about this together as a family when your father can make it home._

She lifts herself higher with one stroke of her wings and seems to shimmer in the light of the street lamps, suddenly disappearing. His heart seizes in his chest, and he wonders if she’s gone all over again, but he wants to hope it’s something to do with her connection to his dad. It’s been so long since his mother told him to do anything, so even though he wants to find out what’s happened to Derek, even though he wants to go screech in Scott’s ears until he _understands_ the enormity of his fuck ups, Stiles goes home and crawls into his bed to sleep like his mom had told him to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone cares I have made a Grooveshark playlist for the series. Handy link is below, and I will be more than glad to answer any questions about my reasoning for any and all songs. /will babble about music endlessly if you let her XD;;
> 
>  
> 
> [Your Song Reminds Me of Swimming](http://grooveshark.com/playlist/Your+Songs+Remind+Me+Of+Swimming/76458867)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to TheGreatSporkWielder for betaing and helping me to round out the end!
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone kudosing and commenting!
> 
> SOOOOOooooo....the conversation with Ms. Morrell was basically made for my fic. That is why you get a longer chapter.

Stiles kind of hates Ms. Morrell as he sits in her office. It’s not personal. She’s nice, pretty, and welcoming; everything a high school counselor should be. It’s just the fact that she’s there at all waiting for him to talk that makes him hate her. He honestly has no other reason. She’s not out to kill him (at least he doesn’t think so, but nowadays it’s hard to be sure), so apart from the counseling thing, she’s good in his books. 

He just really doesn’t want to be there not-talking about everything that happened to him that night. Sure, the majority of their class is having to touch in with one of their high school’s counselors, but for Stiles it’s pretty much a pointless waste of time considering how much of what will come out of his mouth will be lies. 

“You know when you’re drowning you don’t actually inhale until right before you blackout. It’s called voluntary apnea.”

After his mother had died- _been eliminated only on the first plane-_ and Stiles had discovered exactly what she was, what he was, he had researched drowning. He’d become fascinated with it, disturbingly so, for a little while. He had tried to understand the power inside him and the hungers that came with it. 

Stiles tries not to think about his mother being there and silent on the matter that whole time when she could have easily explained some things to his dad. He could have passed it off as knowing from before she died, but they didn’t even do that. He shoves the thought aside. 

Instead, he strings the net of his lacrosse stick perfectly, tying off the knots immovably. All that will be left is melting the strings to be sure they don’t loosen. It’s weird to be changing his own strings for once. Generally, he’s been begged by Scott to do his friend’s. Before the bite, it wasn’t a problem, afterwards Scott’s stick was suddenly being used a lot more, and needing adjustments a lot more often.

“But no matter how much you’re freaking out the instinct to not let any water in is so strong that you won’t open your mouth until you feel like your head is exploding. Then when you finally do let   
it in that’s when it stops hurting. It’s not scary anymore it’s...it’s actually kind of peaceful.”

Especially if a siren gave you a note to release you before the head exploding feeling becomes a problem.

“Are you saying you hope Matt felt some peace in his last moments?”

That wasn’t what he was getting at, not at all. Matt didn’t deserve peace. He deserved Tartarus for what he had done just to Mrs. McCall and Stiles’s dad, in Stiles’s opinion. That wasn’t even taking into account the former swim team members or the deputies he had forced Jackson to kill.

“I don’t feel sorry for him.”

His song boils angrily in his throat and Stiles wonders if that’s him talking, or the otherness that he is for a moment, but in the end he decides it’s all the same. 

“Can you feel sorry for the nine-year-old Matt who drowned?”

He hates that she’s using that word. Matt didn’t drown. The definition of drowning was _dying_. Matt had lived. Yes, he had gone through a traumatic experience, but he should have told someone. Maybe not when he was nine, because, sure, Stiles can see how he would be scared shitless at that age, but as he got older he should have recognized that he needed help, that he could get help even through anonymous services. 

“Just because a bunch of dumbasses dragged him into a pool when he couldn’t swim doesn’t really give him the right to go off killing them one by one. And by the way, my dad told me they found a bunch of pictures of Allison on Matt’s computer. And not just of her, he photoshopped himself into these pictures; stuff like them holding hands and kissing, like he had built this whole fake relationship. So, yeah, maybe drowning when he was nine years old was what set him off the rails, but the dude was definitely riding the crazy train.”

That wasn’t exactly true. He had seen in his dad’s case file left on the kitchen table that Matt had been a creeping stalker in addition to a murderer. He hadn’t actually had a chance to really _talk_ with his dad and his mother yet. 

“One...positive thing came out of this, though, right?” 

Stiles had been so _relieved_ when his dad called to say that he was being given his job back and he would be working late hours for at least the week. He hadn’t fucked up his dad’s standing in the community so badly that they wouldn’t take him back. Granted, they didn’t have much of a choice with a third of the force dead, but.... Stiles had been so relieved that the accusation, the words on the tip of his tongue about his mom, about seeing her and knowing his dad had been lying to him had stuttered and died in his mouth before he put his voice into them.

“Yeah.....yeah, but I still feel like there’s something wrong between us. I don’t know, it’s just like tension when we talk. Same thing with Scott.”

Not that Stiles had talked often to either of them. His conversations with his dad had consisted mostly of inquires about whether or not the other had ate and what the meal had been. Scott-- Stiles was afraid of what he might say to Scott.

“Have you talked to him since that night?”

He doesn’t want to think about Scott and Gerard. Stiles doesn’t want to contemplate how badly his friend had betrayed Derek’s pack of misfits, or Derek himself. Selfishly, it helps him to justify never telling Scott his own secrets. He couldn’t take the risk of being discovered. Not ever. He pulls tightly at the strings, adjusting a knot and distracting himself from his mind. Make an excuse, he tells himself. Distract, deflect.

“No not really. Nah, he’s got his own problems to deal with, though. I don’t think he’s talked to Allison either, but that might be more her choice, you know? He mom dying hit her pretty hard, but I guess it brought her and her dad closer …”

Not that Allison and Chris’s increased closeness was a good thing for anyone except Chris. The sinking feeling Stiles got whenever he caught a glimpse of Allison in the hallway, or around town was enough to make him wonder if he shouldn’t just put the Argents out of their misery with a song one night. For one moment, in the grocery store parking lot, Stiles had been afraid Kate was back.

“Jackson? Jackson hasn’t really been himself lately. Actually, the funny thing is right now, Lydia is the one who seems the most normal.”

Stiles pulls on the laces with his teeth to rearrange something too tight for him to get at with his fingers. It serves the dual purpose of hiding his grimace as well. Jackson’s like an android going through the motions of an unimaginatively written code during the school day, and the only thing normal about Lydia is the way she seems to be maniacally climbing the social ladder again while simultaneously scaring everyone away from her. It’s like she can remember the motions, but her execution is ever so slightly off. It makes him want to sing them to sleep, not to death, just let them rest a little while. 

“And what about you, Stiles? Feeling some...anxiety about that championship game tomorrow night?”

The question catches him off guard and he has to wonder what she’s getting at. His dad had promised to take the whole night off to come and to rest at home afterwards, so it was likely that would be the first time they got a chance to speak since he had suddenly become able to see his dad subtly interacting with his mom _all the time._ It made his heart ache, but in a good way. All this time he had thought his dad was still mourning her, but he’d been wrong. 

Or Ms. Morrell could be getting at Jackson and the puppies and every other freaking thing going wrong in Beacon Hills. He narrowed his eyes at her and feels his song bubble up just a bit in his throat. It was so much easy to control and simply _be_ what he was since that night and watching Matt go to his death. Stiles was sure he should be more disturbed by it than he was.

“Why would you ask me that?”

She gestures at the lacrosse stick in his lap and he blinks. _Oh._ Well, that was okay then.

“Oh. Uh, no. I never actually play....But hey, since one of my teammates is dead and another one is missing, who knows, right?”

Not that he was counting on anything.

“You mean Isaac...One of the three runaways. You haven’t...heard from any of them, have you?”

He should have kept his mouth shut about Isaac. This was not a line of questioning he wanted to go down. He understood why they had cut and disappeared, but he didn’t think it was going to help them in the long run. Hiding from the hunters just gave them time to prepare better, more time to seek, and do what they do best, more time to _hunt_.

“How come you’re not taking any notes on this?”

It was better than talking about how those runaways were literally fleeing for their lives. They were another set he wanted to sing to sleep to put them out of their misery. 

“I do my notes after the session.”

A likely story. Stiles wasn’t sure he believed it, even though with a student like him she had good reason to wait. He’d definitely be the patient trying to read what she was writing upside down. 

“Your memory’s that good?”

It’s a pointless challenge, but his time is almost up and if he can keep her distracted for any amount of time longer it’ll spare him.

“How about we get back to you?”

Well, it was worth a shot, but he doesn’t want to talk about himself. He doesn’t want to talk about the way he’s changed so much in a week or the way his family is suddenly back up to three members--that it had never really lost a member to begin with. Stiles certainly doesn’t want to talk about werewolves or near death experiences or _freaking insane_ hunters that don’t care who they hurt.

“Stiles?”

He knows he has to give her _something_ , though.

“I’m fine. Yes, I’ve been not sleeping, the jumpiness, the constant overwhelming crushing fear that something terrible is about to happen.”

Since the station, it was like his senses were focused in all the time. A word in passing with his mom while his dad was sleeping had reassured him it was fine, he was normal for what they were, but it was making him uber aware of everything, and that much more tuned in to everyone’s fear and worry. 

“It’s called hypervigilance. The persistent feeling of being under threat.”

Or is was just his siren senses tingling. He was still trying to get a handle on it. The way he could hone in on the other people around him and practically taste their negative emotions was really disturbing him.

“It’s not just a feeling though. It’s-it’s like it’s a panic attack, you know, like I can’t even breathe.”

He couldn’t sometimes still. It happened less often, but when he thought too much about how his dad had lied to him, when he began wondering too much what could happen at the championship game, or when he worried about Derek and the wolf puppies and whether or not they’d already been caught by the hunters, _especially that one_ , his heart clenched in his chest and he just wanted to sing and sing and sing until everything got better. He knew it wasn’t that easy, though.

“Like you’re drowning?”

The irony of the conversation was either going to make him cry or burst into laughter, but sure, it was like drowning in his own song.

“Yeah.”

“So, if you’re drowning, and you’re trying to keep your mouth closed until that very last moment, what if you choose to not open your mouth? To not let the water in?”

Then he didn’t sing. He didn’t change anything, didn’t hurt anyone, but for argument’s sake....

“You do anyways. It’s a reflex.”

“But, if you hold off until that reflex kicks in you have more time, right?”

More time to be hunted, more time to run....or maybe more time to muster yourself and find the right notes.

“Not much time.”

“But more time to fight your way to the surface.”

Not when it’s inside of him turning like the ocean itself in his veins.

“I guess.”

“More time to be rescued.”

He couldn’t be rescued from his own blood. 

“More time to be in agonizing pain. Did you forget about the part where you feeling like your head’s exploding?”

Or the part where he’s choking on his own instincts and desires trying to hold them back to save his friends.

“If it’s about survival, isn’t a little agony worth it?”

To him, of course their survival was worth agony on his part.

“Yeah, but what if it just gets worse? What if it’s agony now and it’s just hell later on?”

Like it was now. He had been in agony before he had grown into himself. Now he had more control, like his voice was tempered a little, but when he did think too much, wish too hard and want to fix everything it was so much worse than it had been before.

“Then think about something Winston Churchill once said: ‘If you’re going through hell....keep going.’” 

Stiles supposed she had a point. It was his only option at this fork in the road, so he’d swallow his song until the last possible moment, even if it felt like his head was going to explode, to keep from turning his friends’ agony into the hell it could become.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to TheGreatSporkWielder for beta-ing!
> 
> I'm sorry this chapter took so long. I found it kind of hard to pick up Teen Wolf after my semester started and the season ended, but no fear! It will get completed.
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who's read and left feedback!

The blow is sharp from behind and it’s enough to knock Stiles out until he’s being dragged through the Argents’ house. He can’t help but think it’s pretty damn lucky for them that they managed to get him before he could scream and that he woke up without panicking. His arm is pinned behind his back, right between his wings on the second plane. The position is crushing his right one in the crook of his elbow and it hurts like a motherfucker, enough that he can’t stay silent as he’s pushed forward.

“Ow-Ow-Ow-OW-”

It’s a relief to bang his knees on the stairs and ground. The pain there gives him something to concentrate on as he takes a split second to lay there and stretch out his wings. His ears immediately tune in to the hum of electricity and the whimper signifying he isn’t alone. His eyes are great for night vision once they’ve adjusted, but he still hasn’t figured out the trick to make them do it any faster than a human’s would. He gropes for the light switch on the wall behind him, curling his wings reflexively around his front to keep from smushing them against the concrete.

It wasn’t the last thing he was expecting to see, but both Boyd and Erica strung up by their wrists was pretty high up on the list. Fury courses through him. Erica and Boyd don’t deserve this, and sure Stiles isn’t exactly their friend, but Erica’s still totally the Catwoman to his Batman (even if he was actually more like a cross between Aquaman and Hawkman and how weird is that) and Boyd’s the calmest guy his age Stiles’s ever met.He darts forward and reaches for Erica’s ties first because he already knows Boyd’s okay with being second, but they’re groaning at him, and _fuck_ \- those wires hurt. He wonders if that’s how bad it feels for them all the time or if there’s some sort of water in his bones that makes electricity his mortal enemy.

“There were trying to warn you. It’s electrified.”

And of course, he doesn’t get to deal with Chris who’s mostly rational and probably wouldn’t have had him kidnapped in the first place, but the psycho substitute principal. Everything about Gerard grates on Stiles’s nerves.

“What are you doing with them?”

It’s stupid question, but Gerard’s exactly the kind of villain that wants his victims to know the so called errors of their ways before he kills them and Stiles can take advantage of that to stall and think of a plan. He doesn’t want to sing unless he has to. If there’s some other way he can get himself, and the werewolves out he won’t do it. The last thing he needs is to put himself on the Argent’s wanted list.

“At the moment, just keeping them comfortable. There’s no point in torturing them. They won’t give Derek up. The instinct to protect their alpha is too strong.”

Even with his newfound control it’s a bitch not to open his mouth and put Gerard out for the count with a few simple sounds. The old man’s just leaning there like he hasn’t got a fucking care in the world and it infuriates Stiles. They aren’t monsters. They’ve got people who love them, and hopes and dreams just like every single silly human out there. It’s obscene what hunters do. Stiles understands the desire to protect, he really does, but he can’t see how hunters can call what they do protecting in any capacity.

“Okay, so what are you doing with me? Because Scott can find me, alright? He knows my scent. It’s pungent, you know? More like a stench. He could find me even if I was buried at the bottom of a sewer covered in fecal matter and urine.”

He keeps his voice quiet and lets it tremble. Hero lesson number one is never let them know when they haven’t got you beat. They aren’t far apart and Boyd and Erica can hear him just fine. He’s stalling. Gathering his thoughts. He’s strong, but he’s not trained he’s pretty sure he’ll get his ass kicked if he tries to take on the old man by himself, but it’s his only other option to try out before dropping Gerard with a song.

“You have a knack for creating a vivid picture, Mr. Stilinski. Let me paint one of my own. Scott McCall finds his best friend bloodied and beaten to a pulp. How does that sound?”

Gerard’s inching into his personal space and Stiles can feel his internal systems freaking out even further. Everything in him is telling him to defend himself.

“I think I might prefer more of a still-life or a landscape, you know?”

It’s an effort to shut his mouth and swallow. He can feel his teeth sharpening and he just really wants to lean forward and maybe rip out Gerard’s jugular with them, but it’s really not a good idea at them moment and he has no clue where the hell it’s come from. He needs a reason, a real reason to fight back to excuse to himself and his parents why he’s about to give himself away after sixteen years of complete secrecy.

“What are you, ninety? I can probably kick your ass up and down this roa-”

Gerard’s backhand is like what he imagines hitting a rock under a wave is like, unyielding. He rolls with it, let’s the hit send him to the floor even though the defence lessons from his dad have taught him losing his feet is a horrible move.

“Okay wait- wait- wait--”

He plays his part while he thinks. He acts like the stunned teenager taking the hits opened mouthed and gasping. A flicker of his gaze to the werewolves shows they’ve closed their eyes and he wants to laugh a little because that’s really unfair. They make him watch them get hurt all the fucking time. Turn around’s no good though, right?

Stiles takes a deep breath and he grins. His vision sharpens, and there’s that peek into the shadows he’d been needing earlier, but it’s irrelevant compared to the shock in Gerard’s eyes and the taste of his own blood fresh on his teeth. He exhales a little tune and can feel the old man’s whole body go rigid. Three beautiful low notes mean he’s out of Gerard’s grasp and straightening his uniform shirt. He can feel how strong Gerard’s will is fighting against his song hanging in the air, but he can also feel a terrifying rage and fearful shock beneath all his fight. There’s something about him that Gerard hates absolutely, and while it worries Stiles for the future, he takes a little satisfaction in it, too.

He sings a little more to make sure Gerard stays where he’s supposed to while he flicks off the electric generator and cuts Erica and Boyd down with a single sharp talon. It’s a phenomenal feeling to be useful to them, to show them the talents he’s always had even if they’re both giving him wary looks as they rub the feeling back into their wrists. Stiles sends them up the stairs ahead of him before turning to look at Gerard again.

His face aches and he’s pretty sure even one of his sharper teeth is loose on the left side, but he’d worry about that later. For now, it’s enough to know for once that he’s in control of the situation. He wonders if anyone would know, what Boyd and Erica might think if he ended it right here and now. He could make it look like a heart attack, probably, with the right combination of notes and pace. The thought is more than tempting. Then he remembers how proud his mom had been when he held back and didn’t choose the path of murder at the sheriff’s station.

Stiles strings out a tune that will keep Gerard in place long enough for him to get far, far away and he leaves the man there, still breathing.

Of course, that’s right before he literally bumps into Chris in the hallway as he’s trying to sneak his way out. The man is damned quiet and Stiles is too wrapped up in escaping to manage his heightened senses in a useful way. He can see the instant Chris goes for a weapon, some knife or gun that’s an automatic response to his alternative appearance. It’s a reflex he doesn’t suppress for once to simply air a note and freeze the blond man in his tracks.

They stand there, frozen for a minute, but Stiles is fully aware of Gerard’s freeze ticking down and the fact that he still isn’t out of the hunters’ lair. Chris’s eyes sweep over him and there’s a little fear there, but not much, just determination, and curiosity. He doesn’t hate Stiles like Gerard does, not for what he is. It’s a little bit of a relief, honestly, and he can feel the moment Chris takes in his bloodied lip and cheek. There’s a spike of anger there, but not at him.

Stiles takes a breath, and a chance.

“Your dad’s frozen in the basement. Boyd and Erica are gone. You’ll be free before he is. He’s crazy. They took me from the lacrosse game. Yes, I’m a siren, but you two are the first people who have ever heard me besides my parents. You’re the only part of this outfit that still seems to have any sort of sanity. Use it.”

Stiles doesn’t stick around to get a response.


End file.
